Promoting Literature for Black History Month — and other Housekeeping rules

I get a LOT of emails from concerned readers of the personal sort, and I get a fair amount of emails about various blog promotions. Here’s a rule of thumb for anyone reading this: I usually don’t add blogs that I don’t frequent. If I added every blog that someone solicited to me via email, I’d have a blogroll longer than the blog myself. And also I get emails with persons soliciting their pieces for me to publish. Again, if I’m not doing an exchange with another blogger, I’m not randomly going to post your piece just because–that’s why you should start your own blog! Be empowered! You can do it!

That being said, I did get an email about a promotion for black children’s books at a site called NorthParan.com and I looked at the site and figured it wouldn’t hurt to do a promotion for them. Don’t get used to this, but here goes. Check them out. Truthfully and radically yours, JLL

Let me tell you about a new website that could potentially be a game-changer for black children across the globe. NorthParan.com is adding a philanthropic touch to the business of selling black books. For every book purchased on the site, North Paran will donate a book to a child in need. The site’s slogan is Buy One, Give One.

In the life of a child there is nothing more powerful than a book. It has the potential to free a child’s mind, to open up a world of possibilities. Incredibly, the mere presence of books in the home can lead to greater academic achievement: researchers have determined that a child who grows up in a home with at least 500 books will attain three more years of education than a student with no books in the home. But for millions of children in the United States and around the world, their access to age-appropriate books is limited or nonexistent. North Paran’s mission is to change that.

Neil Nelson, the site’s co-founder, is driven by the memories of his childhood in Jamaica, when his family only had five books in the house that he and his sister had to share. But Neil read those five books over and over, until he had all the words memorized. Now he wants to change this bleak picture for as many children as he can. After starting a vastly successful celebrity news and video site that reached nearly 30 million unique visitors last year, Neil partnered with husband-and-wife authors Nick Chiles and Denene Millner to create NorthParan.com, a cutting-edge site that will publicize black books and nourish black children. Chiles and Millner have written or co-written 19 books between them—Millner is the co-author with Steve Harvey of the #1 New York Times bestseller “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man,” which was the top-selling nonfiction book in the country in 2009, and the sequel “Straight Talk, No Chaser,” which has already reached #1 on the New York Times list. Chiles co-authored with gospel legend Kirk Franklin “The Blueprint,” which also was a New York Times bestseller last year. Millner and Chiles are both also award-winning journalists and the parents of three children of their own.

By spreading the word and making all your book purchases at NorthParan.com, you can help get a book in the hands of every child in our community. If, for every book we bought in 2009, a free book was given to a child in our community, we could give 4 free books to every Black child under age 10 in America.

The following is appropriate for your uppity book reading post–think about the value this culture places on teachers:

From themudflats.net 2-20-11 Open thread / Overthemoon commenter

Are you sick of highly paid teachers?

Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or10 months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do – babysit!

We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan– that equals 6 1/2 hours).

Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day…maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day.

However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.

Wait a minute — there’s something wrong here! There sure is!

The average teacher’s salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days

= $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student–a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!) WHAT A DEAL!!!!

Make a teacher smile; repost this to show appreciation for all educators.